Knowledge and Conduct: Zhi and the Epistemic Landscape in the Xunzi

Ph.D. University of Hawaii at Manoa 2016.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation focuses on reexamining the epistemic landscape of Xunzi’s philosophy. Starting with the notion of person-in-relationship (to which relationship is a built-in, rather than an add-on, element), I part ways with epistemic atomism and explore the most significant aspects of the Xunzian conception of knowledge-and-wisdom (zhi) in the communal context: knowing how and knowing who. I argue that both knowing how and knowing who in the Xunzi point to a certain kind of cultivated responsiveness. While epistemic atomism aims at representational accuracy and certainty, Xunzi’s exclusive attention on responsiveness instead of representation is intimately associated with the cosmology that reality is a continual transformational process. Such an emphasis on responsiveness extends to his positive treatment towards metaphor (linguistic responsiveness), imagination (intellectual responsiveness), and wisdom (practical responsiveness). Since wisdom is a unifying intellectual virtue and it is almost impossible to understand wisdom in an impersonal way, I then return to the very notion of the Xunzian person and articulate the core intellectual virtues from Xunzi’s perspective. I argue that Xunzi’s regarding of exemplars as epistemic paradigms provides valuable insights for the exemplarist turn in virtue epistemology

Alternative Ingredient Recommendation: A Co-occurrence and Ingredient Category Importance Based Approach

As many people will refer to a recipe when cooking, there are several recipe-sharing websites that include lots of recipes and make recipes easier to access than before. However, there is often the case that we could not get all the ingredients listed on the recipe. Prior research on alternative ingredient substitution has built a recommendation system considering the suitability of a recommended ingredient with the remained ingredients. In this paper, in addition to suitability, we also take the diversity of the ingredient categories and the novelty of new combination of ingredients into account. Besides, we combine suitability with novelty as an index, to see whether our method could help find out a new combination of ingredients that is possibly to be a new dish. Our evaluation results show that our proposed method attains a comparable or even better performance on each perspective

Critical Success Factors for the Implementation of Integrated Healthcare Information Systems Projects: An Organizational Fit Perspective

Many healthcare reforms are to digitalize and integrate healthcare information systems. However, the disparity of business benefits in having an integrated healthcare information system (IHIS) varies with organizational fit factors. Critical success factors (CSFs) exist for hospitals to implement an IHIS successfully. This study investigated the relationship between the organizational fit and the system success. In addition, we examined the moderating effect of five CSFs -- information systems adjustment, business process adjustment, organizational resistance, top management support, and the capability of key team members – in an IHIS implementation. Fifty-three hospitals that have successfully undertaken IHIS projects participated in this study. We used regression analysis to assess the relationships. The findings of this study provide a roadmap for hospitals to capitalize on the organizational fit and the five critical success factors in order to implement successful IHIS projects

Effects of red and blue light ratio on the morphological traits and flower sex expression in Cucurbita moschata Duch.

Squash (Cucurbita moschata Duch.) is an important fruit vegetable that can be long-term transport and storage. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are commercially used light sources applied to improve the producing of leaf vegetables in plant factory. However, the influences of LEDs on the plant growth and flower development of fruit vegetables remain unknown. In this study, five effective light quality treatments, including white light, a 10:8 ratio of blue (B) to red (R) light, a 10:4 mixture of blue/red light, red light, and blue light, were used for growing squash and inducing female flowers to maximize production. Our results show that varying light quality influence morphological traits and flower appearance. Both blue and red light improved the development of first and second internodes and induced larger leaves and petiole lengths, whereas 10:4 mixture caused shorter plant heights and decreased internode and petiole lengths. Although 10:8 mixture treatment reduced chlorophyll content, this spectral regime increased leaf number and influenced flower sex development, inducing more female flowers and more fruits. Light quality manipulation thus beneficially influences the growth and flower sex proportion in squash plants. Squash plants under 10:8 mixture treatment exhibited increase in yield, and can be used as a supplementary light treatment in plant factory